These Are the George Lucas Facts You’re Looking For

He’s famous around the world as the man who created Star Wars. But did you know when George Lucas was a kid he wasn’t interested in becoming a movie director? Instead, Lucas dreamed of becoming a famous race car driver. A massive car wreck as a teenager nearly killed Lucas and ended those plans. Instead, Lucas went to USC to study filmmaking, and the rest was history. That’s just one of the facts featured in the latest episode of You Think You Know Movies!

Though Star Wars has become one of the biggest pop-cultural brands of all time, and now a part of the Disney empire, five of the six original Star Wars movies are actually independent films; Lucas made the first Star Wars for 20th Century Fox, but retained the rights to make sequels; the five subsequent episodes were all distributed by Fox but made by Lucas’ company, Lucasfilm. In the early 1980s, Lucas found himself in the midst of a costly divorce; to pay his settlement, he sold his studio’s computer animation division to Steve Jobs. That company was later renamed Pixar, and went on to create some of the most popular animated movies ever.

‘You Think You Know Movies?’ is a ScreenCrush original series that dives deep into the cinematic worlds of your favorite movies and freeze frames a few tidbits you might not have known. We’ve already tackled Star Wars, The Avengers and Spider-Man, but now we’re covering the life and times of the man from Skywalker Ranch, George Lucas. Watch more installments of ‘You Think You Know Movies?’ below and let us know in the comments what movies we should cover next.